Various ramblings and musings on gardening, agriculture, food and related subjects.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Botanical Paradise - Travels in Kyrgyrzstan - part one

The All-Archa valley national park is only 30mins from Bishkek the capital.

Two and a half weeks with no mobile phone or internet contact!
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Kyrgyzstan has an amazingly rich flora
spread over its extremely varied and rugged terrain. Dominated by the
Tien Shan mountain range changes in altitude, geology and rainfall
create many different habitats. Dutch nurseryman Brian Kabbes and his
Kyrgyz partner Meerim have started to run trips here to look at plant
life. In just over a year Brian has built up an extraordinary
knowledge of the plants here, in a country with virtually no
botanists, and almost no published information on its plants. We're a
group of 12: assorted plant people, including Cassian Schmidt from
Sichtungsgarten Hermannshof in Weinheim, Germany, his wife the garden
designer Bettina Jaugstetter, Dutch garden history expert and editor of Onze Eigene Tuin Leo den Dulk, and another garden designer friend,
Catherine Jansen.

I'm very happy here!

The flora is basically Eurasian with
odd east Asian species. The mountainous areas look like central
Europe; we could be in Switzerland! and the plant life is largely
made up of very familiar genera, but with very different species and
enormous numbers of them. Ligularias hail from further east, while
more drought-tolerant plants like Eremurus, Ephedra and Perovskia
dominate in the very large areas of dry steppe, reminding us that we
are on part of that vast complex of plain and mountain that make up
central Asia and link us to Iran, Afghanistan and China's province of
Xinjiang.

Cassian with Fleur and Eric from De Kleine Plantage nursery examine Salvia stepposa

Meadows in the Chong Kemin valley are
particularly spectacular. We joke that Piet Oudolf designed them.
Oceans of Salvia! Deep violet-purple, Salvia stepposa with yellow
Hypericum, some yellow clover things (which looks just like yellow
clover things back home) red clover and pink Origanum dominate. But
there are hosts of other plants, including the exquisite pale yellow
Centaurea rupestris, some other centaurea, blue Echium vulgare,
Phlomis pratense, Nepeta nuda, many Artemisia and in the damp bits
towers Ligularia macrophylla. Cassian remarks how similar in
structure it is to the Silphium of the American prairie. Of course we
are an exact climatic and geographic equivalent of the prairies, on
the same latitude as Missouri I think, and as far from the sea as it
is possible to be.

Brian Kabbes has developed an incredible knowledge of Kyrgyz flora in just over a year

Frustratingly difficult to photograph
wildflower meadows at the best of times, here the strong light makes
it almost impossible. I end up discarding most of what I take,
especially so of a tall herb flora area we had visited earlier in the
All-Archa valley. Pictures just look like green porridge.

Tall herb flora in All-Archa. Aconitum leucostomum.

Phlomis oreophila. Herbaceous phlomis spp. were some of the most seen plants of the trip. Good foliage and structure as well as colour.

Tall herb flora develops on the wet but
very well-drained slopes of mountains, mineral nutrients are at a
high level and a kind of giant flora develops, almost all perennials
with no grasses, like a vast garden border on a kind of overdrive. I
find it the most exciting flora of all, with most of its elements
very garden-worthy. Unfortunately it is often very difficult or
dangerous to access. Steep slopes overlooking the valley were full of
giant monkshood Aconitum leucostomum, a Polemonium caucasicum Geranium gracile
and several species of herbaceous Phlomis. The latter are a major
and visually very prominent part of the flora here. Occasional
Eremurus fuscus too, more of the vast Ligularia, and Rheum wittrockii – a
rhubarb whose flowers are collected by locals; they are indeed
delicious, a culinary treat I can see us applying to our own garden
rhubarb next year.

Meerim points out rhubarb flower stalk as a local delicacy.

Catherine and Bettina are not so sure? Flavour is amazing mix of sweet and sour.

Much of the tall herb flora is on very
steep slopes, and you have to crawl up and if you fall you have to
make sure you fall into the slope. I prefer to do it barefoot as you
get a better grip but you then risk impaling yourself on any bits of
old branch which lie half buried. Every now and again you slip and
slither down and you grab onto the nearest Aconitum or Ligularia for
support. We look across at vast rivers of tall herb flora snaking
their way down wet scree slopes on the mountains opposite and then
see the boulders at the bottom – getting up there would be
practically impossible.

Another species in cultivation! Seed collecting was not a major aim of the trip but if it came our way in the bag it goes.

Cassian Schmidt is in seventh heaven
and collecting what seed he can (it is far too early for most that we
see). “This would look so good in the Hermannshof” and “this
would grow in our roadside plantings” are frequently shouted from
slopes, thickets and meadows; he looks always at the potential of
these plants for gardens and public situations. Catherine is like a
mountain goat, ready to run up a slope to check out some little
splash of pink or blue we think might be interesting. I have just got
myself a decent set of binoculars which are very useful for scanning
these steep slopes and deciding whether or not to risk our necks
charging up them.

Needless to say we photographed endlessly

It is interesting to see the level of
genetic variation in the plants we look at. If we had a proper base
here in the country (some babushka with a garden who would grow stuff
in her garden for us, for example) we would already have got quite a
few good cultivars by now. Aconitum leucostomum we have seen in
pearly white, subtle two-tone pink (the first pink monkshood?) and
deep purple. There is a lot of variation in Salvia stepposa too;
Cassian ecstatically points out different bract sizes (bigger bracts
mean a longer season of colour as they outlive the flowers) and
plants with darker stems. One morning we find two plants with the
most exquisite ethereal pale blue flowers. It would sell by the
thousand if only we could get it back home! We stand in the middle of a track looking at some stems, and then look up and see that we are in front of a parked truck, with four men squeezed in the cab, who regard us with great amusement.

Three variants of Aconitum leucostomum, from Jeti Ögüz area.

Echium vulgare - a very common arable weed, often alongside hemp and henbane.

Every day Leo den Dulk's hat would sport a different selection of the local flora.

Noel:Across most of Mongolia marmots and rhubarb (Rheum undulatum in particular) are closely associated - the rhubarb tends to be the dominant plant of the marmot mounds which a re a mixture of soil and small rocks. Of course the rhubarb tends to grow almost anywhere there is broken ground but its association with marmots is very strong. Did you note any similar association in your travels in Kirghizstan? [I should add that I feel that the association in Mongolia and norther China may help explain why the Black Death occurred when it did - once MarcoPolo told the world where to find rhubarb increased trade in it would have similarly increased the chances of the Plague bacillus, carried by marmots, spreading to the human population.]

Noel:Across most of Mongolia marmots and rhubarb (Rheum undulatum in particular) are closely associated - the rhubarb tends to be the dominant plant of the marmot mounds which a re a mixture of soil and small rocks. Of course the rhubarb tends to grow almost anywhere there is broken ground but its association with marmots is very strong. Did you note any similar association in your travels in Kirghizstan? [I should add that I feel that the association in Mongolia and norther China may help explain why the Black Death occurred when it did - once MarcoPolo told the world where to find rhubarb increased trade in it would have similarly increased the chances of the Plague bacillus, carried by marmots, spreading to the human population.]

About Me

Garden writer and researcher, lecturer and teacher, based in the England/Wales border region. An occasional designer of plantings for gardens and public spaces.Other interests, and subjects for occasional publication are agriculture, food politics and environmental issues. Chiefly known for promoting naturalistic and sustainable planting design, I am a believer in design and decision-making based on science and evidence – so I have not signed up to organic jihad. And - lot of globe-trotting doesn’t stop me gardening myself either!
(pic. credit Andrea Jones)

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PLANT SELECTION: LEARNING FROM NATURE

The first in a series of e-books I'm planning with My Garden School

I'm now doing e-books.

I am now publishing e-books through Amazon, for Kindle, smartphones, iPads etc. There are currently three available, two based on collections of writings for Hortus magazine, from the early 2000s, and one which is an interview with Beth Chatto. Click here for Amazon North America or Amazon UK.

En Francais.

Interview

In February I went to Switzerland to do a lecture for the Swiss Hardy Plant Society (rather quaintly called the Swiss Friends of Perennial Plants). Here is the original English version of an interview he did with me. (you can see German and French above). Merci à Xavier Allemann.